Assignment 4 – Line and shape

I posed my model (my wife) on a hard chair (with a cushion for comfort) at a desk reading a book with directional light from a lamp on the desk. Photograph of the image setup:

I did this drawing whilst on holiday and would normally have tried various arrangements to determine the best location for the drawing, however this was clearly the best location and setup to be had, so I went straight into the drawing.

I started out by drawing in the table, lamp, window (and view from it) and curtain before I sat my model down to reduce the amount of time I needed her to pose for. Then I added in the rest of the image with her sat at the table (with the view gone with the daylight). Even doing this, I needed two sessions with my model and the drawing took a lot longer than 2 hours (probably more like 6).

I explored a number of options of how to depict the drawing in line alone, but made most of these in pencil on the actual drawing before drawing over them in pen and erasing the original pencil lines, so have no record of them. The key area I explored in a number of ways was the hair and how to depict it.

These rough sketches in my sketchbook showed that drawing in too many lines would make the hair look very dark, messy (I would have been neater and used continuous lines in a final drawing, but it would have still looked a mess I think), and too different from the other lines in the drawing. So I went for a much simpler depiction of the hair.

My final piece:

I am pleased with this and it does look like my wife. I did draw in a couple of extra pen lines which I removed by drawing over them with a white gel pen (mainly on the window lines), but the only area which I definitely should have tried first before committing to pen was the eyebrow which I think looks odd drawn as an outline.